That nuclear energy plant is often related to a really particular occasion. One in every of its reactors, Unit 2, suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 in what stays essentially the most important nuclear accident in US historical past. It has been shuttered ever since.
However the web site, in Pennsylvania, can be house to a different reactor—Unit 1, which persistently and safely generated electrical energy for many years till it was shut down in 2019. The location’s proprietor introduced final week that it has plans to reopen the plant and signed a cope with Microsoft. The corporate will buy the plant’s complete electrical producing capability over the subsequent 20 years.
This information is fascinating for thus many causes. Clearly this web site holds a sure significance within the historical past of nuclear energy within the US. There’s a chance this might be one of many first reactors within the nation to reopen after shutting down. And Microsoft will probably be shopping for all of the electrical energy from the reactor. Let’s dig into what this says about the way forward for the nuclear business and Huge Tech’s energy demand.
Unit 2 at Three Mile Island operated for only a few months earlier than the accident, in March 1979. On the time, Unit 1 was down for refueling. That reactor began again up, to some controversy, within the mid-Eighties and produced sufficient electrical energy for a whole lot of hundreds of properties within the space for greater than 30 years.
Finally, although, the plant confronted financial struggles. Although it was working at comparatively excessive effectivity and with low prices, it was pushed out of enterprise by file low costs for pure gasoline and the introduction of comparatively low-cost, sponsored renewable power to the grid, says Patrick White, analysis director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a nonprofit suppose tank.
That state of affairs has shifted in simply the previous few years, White says. There’s extra money out there now for nuclear, together with new technology-agnostic tax credit within the Inflation Discount Act. And there’s additionally rising concern in regards to the elevated power demand on the facility grid, partly from tech giants seeking to energy information facilities like these wanted to run AI.
In saying its cope with Microsoft, Constellation Vitality, the proprietor of Three Mile Island Unit 1, additionally shared that the plant is getting a rebrand—the positioning will probably be renamed the Crane Clear Vitality Heart. (Undecided if that one’s going to stay.)
The confluence of the actual location of this reactor and the truth that the electrical energy will go to energy information facilities (and different infrastructure) makes this complete announcement immediately attention-grabbing. As one headline put it, “Microsoft AI Wants So A lot Energy It is Tapping Website of US Nuclear Meltdown.”
